Question:
Thanks for the thorough critique. I appreciate your opinions.

One of the things we had hoped to do was get an interview with someone at theNew Amsterdam Theatre about the ghost sitings. Since this request had to go tothe Disney lawyers (as Disney now owns the theatre) it took quite a long time,and we were not able to get approval before we shot our interview with DanielSelznick in New York. The approval finally did come through, however, so if weare able to raise the money to go back to New York, we will film the interview(as well as additional footage of the New Amsterdam). As Miles Kreuger andother New York theater lovers noted, the theatre facade that appears at thebeginning of the cut is NOT the New Amsterdam. We ran out of time, and had touse another theatre in our "work-in-progress cut." In the final show we willuse the correct theatre facade as well as other shots of the theatre, bothhistoric and current. And, with a little luck, we'll get that interview, too.

You are correct that we made the Lenore Coffee story a little bit PC bychanging the word "Jew" to "gentleman." I don't really like doing that, but mysense was that while the re-enactments might take people a little by surprise,the "Jew" would strike them as even stranger, without us providing considerablecontext for the comment. I'll admit that isn't a very strong argument, and I'mstill a little uncomfortable with the decision. However, there have been timesin the past when a direct quote has shocked people and even given them thewrong impression because it was not fully explained, and I didn't want that tohappen here.

Answer: Your film was a rough cut, and making allowances for that, your reenactmentsstill completely stopped the documentary and I don't mean "stopped" in a goodway.

As a rule, I am against resentments, but in this case, I agree that they areneeded. What stopped the production was not the reenactments themselves, butthe change to silent style. If the intertitles were eliminated and the voiceover narration continued like in the rest of the film, and the scenes keptshorter and with a few dissolves between shots, this would have worked and beenan asset to the film. In other words, do the rest like the hands on the poisonbottle.

Also, the sets used for the reenactments were too plain and brightly lit.They almost looked like 1960s modern!. Try to either clutter the sets up abit, or shoot in a real historical house with historic furnishings.

Please don't take this as a criticism, when in fact you are to be commended formaking a documentary on such an interesting and noncommercial subject.